New York Republicans are off the endangered species list.
Many had left them for dead after the November 2008 elections in which Democrats took every statewide office and control of the Senate and Assembly with all its patronage jobs and influence for sale. Now, Republicans are talking about reclaiming the Senate, maybe even the governor’s office this fall. Their optimism exploded with Tuesday’s win by a Republican in Massachusetts, giving the bluest of states a GOP senator for the first time since 1972 — and in a Kennedy seat no less.
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“I think people sense an arrogance in terms of what Democrats are doing,” said state Sen. Dean Skelos, the Republican head of the state Senate’s minority in Albany. He has a long list: Democrats in Washington forcing an expensive and controversial health care system on taxpayers, infighting by Democrats in Albany that led to gridlock, and approval by the all-Democratic state government of the highest tax increases in history.
“You wonder if anyone in Albany is listening,” said Rick Lazio, the only announced Republican candidate for governor in New York. “Does anybody get it? Is anybody home? … People have just had enough.”
Democrats say they are listening.
“The message from yesterday was heard,” said Democratic U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer a day after Republican Scott Brown won in Massachusetts.
“And we will show we hear them in the agenda we pursue over the next year,” said Schumer, who as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2006-2008 helped give his party the Senate majority. “Our focus must be on jobs, the economy and delivering for the middle class.”
Beyond the sound bites and headlines lies a warning for Republicans, too.
“It looks pro-Republican,” said Bruce Gyory, a political consultant who teaches about national and state voting trends at the state University at Albany. “But just like Democrats were over-reading the leash they had” when Democrats won the White House, “Republicans are way over-reading this.”
Gyory said the independent vote appears to have shifted to “classic right-center” for now, but that shouldn’t be interpreted as easy votes for Republicans. “This mood continues and I think we are in that as long as we’re in this Great Recession.”
Think of TV’s ultra conservative Archie Bunker in Democratic stronghold Queens; or Tyler Perry’s Pops character in “House of Payne,” stressed out by the socio-economics of today, both angry and quick to lash out.
“In that mood, no one wants to be taken for granted,” Gyory said.
The trend was seen in Democratic losses last year in New Jersey, Virginia and in New York’s Westchester and Nassau counties. Incumbent Democrats lost independent-minded voters from each party and failed to motivate their own base. Two upstate special elections in Congress drew national attention by voters veering from tradition: One elected a Democratic newcomer in a GOP district, and in the other, a Conservative novice sidelined the GOP nominee and opened the way to a Democratic win.
“Moderates are starting to see Democrats as too liberal and liberals are starting to see the Democrats as too moderate,” Gyory said. The key: “Who is going to grab that vital corps of independents? In 2010, it’s a jump ball.”
A Siena College poll a week ago showed the 70 percent of New Yorkers who described themselves as independents felt the state was headed in the wrong direction, along with 75 percent of Republicans. Together, that hurts the Democrats’ commanding enrollment advantage of nearly 2-to-1. In addition, the poll found white New Yorkers 35 years and older — a reliable chunk of voters — were the most pessimistic about the state’s direction.
“There’s a large swath of independents who swing from party to party and don’t really like either of them,” said political science Professor Robert McClure of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. For example, he said Obama supporters thought they won a referendum for their policies, while many voters were simply saying they were fed up after eight years of President George W. Bush and his gang.
“What I think these voters are saying is, ‘You don’t understand me, you don’t care about me, you don’t live like me, you just tell me what to do,’” McClure said. The opposite was Democrat Bill Clinton, who won the presidency with a simple message: “I feel your pain.”
“We independents soured on the policies of George W. Bush and that turned into a nightmare for the Republican Party,” said Frank MacKay, chairman of New York’s Independence Party.
“And in many ways the policies of President Obama are again turning independents against the current administration,” Mackay said of the Massachusetts Senate vote. “But if Republicans somehow see this as a mandate for the Republican Party, they are in for a rude awakening.”
“If I’m a Republican, I’m dancing,” said Doug Muzzio, a politics professor at New York City’s Baruch College. “But people have died on the dance floor, don’t forget.”
By Michael Gormley, Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
